Intex Technologies to introduce three more devices on the Firefox platform

ET had reported earlier that Google is spending $25 million to market its Android One devices in India, due to launch next month.

ET Bureau

August 26, 2014, 08:52 IST

ET had reported earlier that Google is spending $25 million to market its Android One devices in India, due to launch next month.NEW DELHI: Intex Technologies, which launched India's and possibly the world's cheapest smartphone on Monday, will introduce three more devices on the Firefox platform within the next 12 months, including a 3G Firefox phone by December.

Intex, US-headquartered Mozilla Corp's second Indian partner in mobile phones, will launch a 3G Firefox device for under Rs4,000 by December, said its business head for mobile phones, Sanjay Kumar Kalirona. Other models with bigger screens will follow, he added.

Separately, Jane Hsu, director of product marketing at Mozilla's mobile devices group, told ETthat the company will increase its reach in the Indian markthrough tie-ups with larger local brands such as Micromax, Karbonn and Lava. Mozilla expects one such deal to close by mid-September.

"We're launching more devices... See if we can close the deal before mid-September," Hsu said. "We're open to working with all brands willing to work with Firefox OS". The Intex Cloud FX, priced Rs1,999, is available on snapdeal-.com. It follows handset maker Spice's launch of a Firefox-based smartphone for Rs2,299 in the domestic market last week. Spice's device goes on sale on the same website on August 29.

Hsu said Mozilla will have to adopt a different strategy in India, where consumers prefer purchasing phones, calling plans and data plans separately. A year ago, the company had launched Firefoxbased devices in Latin America, eastern and southern Europe, where phones are sold bundled with calling plans.

In India, Mozilla is banking on firsttime smartphone users-who account for 70% of the country's 900 million mobile phone subscriber base-for sales of its Firefox-based phones. "It's harder to convince users who are already using smartphones," Hsu said.

The company is touting pricing and simplicity of its operating system as the attractive selling points.

Mozilla is also holding talks with large carriers like Bharti Airtel, Vodafone and Telenor, which have global partnership with the Firefox OS maker, for launching phones bundled with data plans. On Monday it announced a similar tie up with Aircel. "Indian telecom operators are more interested in 3G smartphones instead of 2G ones," Hsu said.

While Firefox will build the developer community and the app ecosystem, which is nascent compared to Android, local brands Intex and Spice will spend on marketing the smartphones and devise separate strategies to popularise the Firefox operating system.

Intex will spend about Rs6-7 crore for promoting the smartphone, a large chunk of which will be used to advertise in print media, targeting the tier 2 and tier 3 cities. "We will have investments but we cannot afford that kind (Google)," Hsu said.

ET had reported earlier that Google is spending $25 million (about Rs100 crore) to market its Android One devices in India, due to launch next month.

Intex's Kalirona said the company expects to sell 100,000 units of Intex Cloud FX within the next 21 days and about 500,000 in the next three months. All future devices from the company will cost under Rs6,000-a range where they will compete with existing Android devices and new Android One devices-he added.

"We're coming from a very different angle into the industry, where we believe that it might take some time, but we expect Firefox to emerge as the third operating system," Hsu said, adding that the company was aiming at 1% share of the global OS market soon, as it has already sold 750,000 devices in the first half of this year.